


Where The One Ends

by Westgate (Harkpad)



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Happy Ending, M/M, Presumed Dead, Tropes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-03
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-06-06 04:42:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6738616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harkpad/pseuds/Westgate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint is presumed dead after a battle and a strange explosion. Bucky is not coping well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where The One Ends

“He was here! I saw him!” It was Natasha, standing at the mouth of the alley, trying to understand what happened, where Clint was, what could’ve possibly have happened besides her best friend being blown up in the heat of battle.

“Nat, he was on the roof. The building collapsed and he was on the fucking roof,” Bucky snarled, and he waded into the rubble of the building, looking for a body.  He didn’t need to grasp at the impossible, but he did need to find the one person who made his daily life live-able for the last year.

“No, he was in the alley. I know he was supposed to be on the roof, but I looked over, and he was here,” she insisted, but she followed Bucky into the rubble.

His heart was racing, beating through his chest like he was going to burst. _Clint_. Bucky looked up one second and he was firing three arrows at once like the badass he was, and then the explosion that none of them were expecting came, and the next second he was gone, along with the building itself. No one could have survived, but Bucky would find him anyway. He’d find him and pull him out and get to hold him one last time before he gave him over to his team and SHIELD to bury.

He swallowed thickly, and kept pulling concrete aside, waiting for the moment he saw the blond hair and black Kevlar and rugged face slack in death – but it didn’t come. They searched for hours and found nothing.

_“You know I’m the best from up high,” Clint’s voice echoed in Bucky’s head from that morning._

_“You might stand a chance when we’re on the move, but I’ve got the distance title clenched.”_

_Bucky leaned in and pressed a kiss to Clint’s lips and said, “I know what I've got clenched,” and Clint laughed, that goofy, snorty laugh that Bucky wanted to hear as often as possible, every damned day._

***

Bucky sat at the conference table, rewinding the video footage from the battle and watching the building collapse again and again.

“Are you hoping he won’t fall this time?” Tony said quietly as he stood behind Bucky’s shoulder.

“We didn’t find a body,” Bucky replied without looking up, and he watched it again.

Three hours later Steve pulled Bucky from the room by his arm. “Come on,” he said. “You need a break.”

“He was on the building, but there’s no body.”

“Buck, get a shower and then you can keep going, but you need to clean up and eat. It’s been ten hours,” Steve told him, and Bucky thought that he must be wrong. Clint couldn’t have been gone ten hours already.

_He stood in the shower and could almost feel Clint’s body pressed against his, water sluicing between their chests as they made out and jerked each other off. They closed themselves off from the world most mornings, and standing with Clint under the spray of the shower made Bucky feel like they were in a whole different universe._

***

“Bucky?” Natasha called from the doorway. “You awake?”

He debated answering her. He was in bed and had no idea what time it was. He didn't really care.

He rolled over and stared at the wall.

“Bucky,” Natasha whispered as she sat down on the edge of his bed. “I need your help.”

He kept staring at the wall and after she called his name two more times, she finally left the room. He could hear her making coffee in the kitchen, could smell it as it brewed, and he remembered yelling at Clint to use a damned mug instead of drinking it straight from the carafe. When she brought a cup in to him, he had curled into a ball and pulled the covers over his head.

_He thought of Clint’s muffled voice against his chest in the morning before they dragged themselves out to the range to practice or down to SHIELD for meetings. Clint would mumble, ‘Let’s skip today and just sleep and fuck,” and Bucky would chuckle and press his body against Clint’s and let him wrap Bucky in his corded arms and they'd at least make out for a while before dragging themselves out of bed and into their day._

***

Bucky threw Clint’s toaster against the wall and watched the pieces scatter across the tile floor, making a sick scraping and crunching sound. It wasn’t enough. He threw the blender against the wall and the crunch was louder, the pieces scattered further out. It wasn’t enough. He pulled a glass bowl from the shelf above the stove and threw it against the wall and this time it was less of a crunch and scrape and more of a crash. It wasn’t enough. He reached for a mug – Clint’s favorite purple and white mug from before he met Bucky – and started to throw it across the whole room when arms wrapped around him from behind like steel clamps.

Steve shouted, “Goddamnit, Bucky. Stop!”

Bucky’s breath roared in his ears and he struggled against Steve’s arms. He needed to break something the way he felt broken, he needed to find the thing that would shatter in precisely the way his heart did that afternoon when the whole team sat in a stale conference room and the words, “SHEILD’s asked us to call off the search. He’s gone,” fell from Tony’s mouth.

 “You have to stop, Buck,” Steve whispered, his voice harsh and filled with anguish. “Stop.”

“He was the first person –“ Bucky choked out. “He didn't care what I'd done.”

“I know, Buck. I know.”

Bucky twisted in Steve's arms so his face was pressed to his wide chest, and they stood like that, in Clint’s empty kitchen, and every time Bucky blinked, Clint's face would appear, his eyes soft and dancing. Eventually, Bucky’s legs gave out and Steve shuffled them over to the purple couch and they sank into the cushions.

Bucky woke later in his own room, and it felt like a tomb, empty and numb.

***

“Something has happened,” were the first words Bucky bothered to pay attention to as the whole team was gathered in the common room a week later. Bucky blinked and sat up, because Thor’s voice was uncharacteristically serious and it felt like the words were meant for him.

“What?” Natasha asked, and she was standing now, like she heard the difference in Thor’s tone, too.

“Heimdall has found something – a place – a fold if you will, where sometimes things get caught by accident.”

Now Bucky was on his feet, because Thor never took his eyes off of him. Bucky’s breath was short and he felt his skin prickle in violent anticipation.

“Things?” Tony said, and Bucky turned to him sharply, because he could hear the hope in Tony’s voice that Bucky was trying desperately to quash in his own chest.

“In this case, our fallen comrade, but we have to hurry. These folds close when it is the will of the Universe for them to close, no matter what we might want,” Thor replied.

“How?” Steve started, but Thor cut him off.

“The explosion was set off by an Asgardian outlaw, you know this.”

Bucky remembered his white hot anger at the aliens playing with their world like it was a sandbox and like Clint was a mere toy to be discarded.

Thor added, “She used her own gifts to spark the explosion, and Heimdall thinks Clint got caught in a backlash of sorts. That's why we couldn't find his body.”

“And why I saw him in the alley,” Natasha stated.

Thor nodded, and Bucky heard him say, “Yes, an afterimage from the spell.”

Bucky was pulling his coat on and trying to breathe and he said, “Come on, then,” and remembered Clint bitching like an old lady about ‘fucking magic and gods” and “I swear I'm going to kick Odin’s ass myself if I ever get caught up in that shit again.”

Bucky just tried to keep breathing.

“Only you,” Thor said to Bucky before looking at the others. “One with a path to the heart, and we will bring him back to the rest of you immediately.”

Bucky shot a quick glance at Natasha, but she swallowed and nodded at him.

They all went out to the ice-cold balcony above the city and Thor wrapped his arm around Bucky’s waist. “Hold on,” he warned, and then the world disappeared in a blink.

***

“Clint?” Bucky said in a harsh whisper to the form hunched over on the bank of a silver river. It looked like flowing mercury, and it was mesmerizing.

The man hunched more, grasped at his hair, and let out a broken sob. Bucky looked at Thor with a murderous glare.

“He has been stranded here the whole three weeks. Go to him. Offer reassurances. He must come back with us willingly.”

Bucky sucked in a breath and knelt down near Clint. He didn't want to startle him. “I broke your blender last week,” he said, because he didn't know how to say anything else, how to explain why or how he was here. “And your toaster, too.”

The sob turned to a harsh laugh, and Clint lifted his head but he still didn't look at Bucky. Instead he stared at the thick river like he wanted to plunge in and let it wash him away, “Why?”

Bucky inched closer and answered, “Because SHEILD declared you dead and I have problems dealing with my emotions.”

Now Clint turned and he raked his eyes down and up Bucky’s body, blinking. “Bucky?” He asked. “Are you really here?”

Bucky nodded and opened his arms, and Clint fell into them and clung so hard that it hurt Bucky’s shoulders. “Don't leave me here,” he gasped against Bucky’s neck, and Bucky swallowed a wave of anger at the crazy Asgardians and their magic.

“I'm taking you home,” he said, and he stood, pulling Clint into his arms in a bridal carry. He looked at Thor, who nodded and called to Heimdall to send them off, and when Bucky blinked again they were back in the tower.

***

Natasha pulled them both down to the couch as soon as they appeared, and Bucky was grateful that she was willing to share Clint for this moment. The two of them sandwiched him in their embrace as Jarvis assured them that his scan of Clint suggested was perfectly healthy despite three weeks in some sort of Asgardian limbo.

“What happened there?” Steve asked softly as Clint finally untangled himself from Bucky and Natasha’s grip.

He was still dressed for the battle, and he wasn't scruffy or thin or anything, really. He looked like the fight had ended an hour ago. He had dark circles under bloodshot eyes, though, and he just stared at the floor and replied, “I don't really want to talk about it. Nothing happened.”

They all realized at the same time that ‘nothing happened’ meant Clint had been stuck wondering what the hell happened and where the hell everyone was for three whole weeks, and no one could say anything for a minute.

Tony finally blew out a hard breath and crossed his arms. “You should get some rest. Pancake breakfast and movie day tomorrow if you want.”

Steve chuckled and nodded as he squeezed Clint’s shoulder gently. He looked at Bucky. “Let me know if you guys need anything.”

The others left, and Natasha wrapped Clint in her arms alone for a few minutes, whispering to him in Russian. Bucky caught a word here and there, but tried not to listen in. After a bit, she pushed him into Bucky’s arms and pressed a quick kiss to Bucky’s forehead before she slipped out of the room.

Bucky didn’t say anything, just stood, pulled Clint to his feet, and guided him back to Clint’s apartment and into his bedroom. Clint’s breathing was harsh, like he was willing himself not to start to cry, and Bucky wordlessly pressed a soft kiss to his lips. He watched as Clint closed his eyes and leaned into Bucky, and he deepened the kiss. When he pulled back, Clint still had his eyes closed, so Bucky set to stripping his clothes off carefully. When he had him naked, he helped him into cotton pajamas and guided him to the bed.

Bucky was going to spoon him, to make him feel safe, but Clint turned and burrowed into Bucky’s arms face first, trembling hard. “I thought I was in hell,” he whispered against Bucky’s chest. “I thought being there alone was my penance for all the bad shit I’ve done and that I was going to be there forever.”

Bucky stroked his hair. “You don’t have any penance to serve, Clint,” he said. “Your ledger is balanced. You saved Natasha, you saved me, and you’ve spent the last fourteen years of your life trying to protect people. No penance required.”

Clint nodded and Bucky heard him swallow. “But I thought – “ and Bucky knew that reassurances wouldn’t change how Clint experienced the last three weeks, no matter who they came from.

“You’re home,” he whispered. “You’re home and when you’re ready we’ll get back to normal and you can help me clean up your kitchen and shop for new appliances.”

Clint laughed, snorted and looked up at Bucky. He shook his head. “I can’t believe you broke my toaster,” he said, and his voice sounded steadier than it had all night.

“And your blender,” Bucky reminded him, and settled them both with the covers and pillows. “Emotions are tough for me.”

“Yeah,” Clint answered, settling and closing his eyes. “Me, too.”

And they slept. And then ate pancakes and slept some more before they showered and made out, before they faced the day and went shopping. Clint took the opportunity to buy all metallic purple appliances, and another purple coffee mug, and he made Bucky swear to never break them, no matter what his mishandled emotions wanted.

Bucky reluctantly agreed.  

 


End file.
